


Raison d'être

by woozifi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, have y'all ever heard of something called black comedy?, i need my housemate to still look me in the eye after reading this, i need to occasionally take a break from writing heart-wrenching angst and romance, if you haven't this is it, not explicitly written sex mind you, rated m for foul language violence occasional descriptions of bloody stuff and sex/mentions of sex, well they aren't quite zombies but everyone is brainwashed by media so eh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7354183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woozifi/pseuds/woozifi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the so-called zombie apocalypse hits the streets out of seemingly nowhere, five different groups of kids team up to survive: Vernon and Seungkwan set out to find a safe place to hide and possibly a really good therapist; university roommates Soonyoung and Seokmin drive an ugly car with their weird stoner neighbours in tow; Joshua becomes the alpha of a pack of dogs and Jeonghan is thoroughly embarrassed; Minghao and Junhui decide to backpack around America at a really, really bad time; and Jihoon and his stepbrother Seungcheol take on the not-so-selfless-or-heroic mission of kidnapping and subsequently bringing Patient Zero of the zombie virus over to the only place that can possibly make a cure.</p><p>A lot of bullshit happens along the way, but hey; if the not-quite-Armageddon hits, you might as well have fun with it, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raison d'être

Motivation is, arguably, one of the most effective, important features of the human psyche. It’s the best bit of encouragement you need to finish a project or ace a test; or, because people are bitter fucks, it’s more likely the exact amount of spite in you to be petty enough to do something just so you can flash the middle finger of victory at some bitch-ass punk who said you couldn’t. It is, in terms of dictionary definitions, meant to inspire an organism to action. Said action can be anything from the courage to go to war or in this case, the effort to wake up and get out of bed.

For Vernon, motivation to wake up and get out of bed came in the form of two things: the first was that screaming was heard outside of his house—and not the obnoxious I-am-a-teenager-and-everyone-in-a-five-mile-radius-should-know-it shouting, either, more like the I-am-about-to-get-killed-by-an-axe-murderer sort of scream, which is surprisingly rather disconcerting and very difficult to sleep through, which he knows because he tried doing just that.

The second was that his mother burst into his room, vomited up possibly two litres of blackish bloody bile, and then proceeded to try and kill him.

 

Twenty-three minutes, sixteen seconds, and two houses down later, Vernon climbs through Seungkwan’s bedroom window by scrambling onto the backyard fence and hauling himself up onto the slanted tiled roof.

“What the fuck is going on outside?” Seungkwan asks, sitting in a bean bag that looks like a giant, deformed blue jellybean. He has a book in his hand and headphones over his ears and flattening his soft brown hair, most likely to block out the dying animal shrieks that have been plaguing their peaceful suburban white-family neighbourhood for hours. Vernon suddenly appearing through his window without so much as a warning text is not something new, so he doesn’t react beyond pulling down his headphones until they rest around his neck. “Hey, why are you not wearing any pants?”

“Were you not even curious enough to look out the window?” Vernon asks, out of breath and possibly out of his mind. He can’t be too sure about the latter, maybe because he’s still too tired and too numb from shock to really process what is happening. “Or maybe look at your laptop?”

“I have to read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ in its entirety before next Wednesday, or I’m fucked for this English test.” Seungkwan knows full well that he could have avoided this fate if he just read the predetermined chapter list every week like he was supposed to, but that’s just ridiculous.

“Speaking of killing mockingbirds,” Vernon holds up a bloody kitchen knife, his fingers wrapped so tightly around the handle that his knuckles are bone-white. “I just had to kill my mom.”

Seungkwan stares. “Dude, what the fuck.”

“If you can just let me use your goddamn laptop, maybe I can explain why.”

Seungkwan slowly puts down his book and watches Vernon open up the laptop and begin typing something into the search bar.

“Did you carry that with you all the way to my house?” Then, when Vernon doesn’t answer, “If you’ve suddenly awakened your inner serial killer, I’d just like to remind you that we’ve been best friends for going on eight years and I never told anyone about that one time you got a weird boner watching an episode of Hannah Montana with your sister, so I think I should be spared from your shit list.”

“I’m not a serial killer,” Vernon responds tiredly, “although I _will_ actually kill you if you ever mention my weird boner story to another soul. But no, it’s because of this.”

He turns the laptop around and shoves it into Seungkwan’s lap.

It’s the home page of their local city news, which any normal healthy teenager avoids like the plague. It usually saves front-page-material on things like robberies or new tax evasion laws, or whichever celebrity is cheating on whomever and is pregnant with somebody’s child. This time around, it instead says in large block letters: _A National Emergency! Avoid All Infected or “Bitten” to Save Your Lives!_

Seungkwan carefully reads through the article and almost immediately forgets most of it, including all the medical jargon and mumbo-jumbo that all consists of basically the same message: some new mutant strain of some virus has turned all those infected into highly aggressive, crazed animals, and all it takes is the transfer of fluids—whether it be blood or saliva—to infect another body. Originally, the government had been keeping tabs on the infected and putting them all in quarantine in some hospital in another city, but all it took was one careless mistake and a scratch of a fingernail down one janitor’s hand and the mess had broken out in disastrous, epidemic proportions.

So basically, the summary on the back of every zombie movie Seungkwan’s seen in his life. It’s so ridiculous, it’s almost funny.

“Is this a joke?” he finally asks once he’s done reading.

“If it is,” Vernon says, “then I just killed my mother over a very stupid joke.”

“Are you sure she was, uh, infected? And dead? Because I was really looking forward to that lasagna she said she was making tomorrow.”

“She ran into my room and tried ripping my arm off, I’m pretty sure she was infected.” Vernon once again holds up the knife. “She chased me around the house for fifteen fucking minutes until I reached the kitchen and got this. If she’s not dead, then this virus must do a great job at making people ignore puncture wounds in their neck.”

“Vernon, Jesus fucking Christ, you just killed your _mom._ ” Seungkwan looks around the room and finds that everything seems so surreal. His bedroom looks the same as ever: his study desk is still a mess and definitely not full of anything study-related, his posters are still up on the walls, the Harry Potter series is still the only set of books in his neglected bookshelf, and the majority of his closet is still on his floor. It doesn’t feel real to be sitting here with his best friend and talking about a dead woman he saw literally the day before, perfectly fine and not insane and promising him a really delicious lasagna dinner. “That’s some heavy shit.”

“Yeah, you think _I_ don’t know that?” Vernon won’t stop staring at the knife. “Dude, this is gonna be, like, years of psychiatric help to get me through this.”

The screams get louder outside of Seungkwan’s window. “Maybe you should let go of the knife.”

“No. We have to leave and find someplace safe. I need this to protect us.”

"We can get something else in my kitchen."

"No, I want this one."

“Vernon, drop the knife.”

“No.”

Seungkwan has to manually pry each one of Vernon’s fingers off of the handle before it can clatter to the ground. Vernon’s hand won’t stop shaking afterwards, so Seungkwan holds it until Vernon stops dry heaving and pulls away with a low mutter of “no homo”.

“Okay, we need to get somewhere safe,” Vernon repeats, his voice wavering slightly but still strong. “Whoever designed our cookie-cutter suburbia paradise houses clearly did not anticipate a pseudo-zombie apocalypse. There are too many large windows, too many glass sliding doors; it just isn’t good enough to hide from these chompers. We should get some weapons and find a place more closed off, ASAP.”

“I sure hope you’re thinking clearly about this,” Seungkwan says reproachfully as they both stand up and head downstairs, where the most weapon-like of household utilities are kept in the kitchen and garage. “Watching the Walking Dead like fifty times does _not_ make you an expert.”

“I disagree.”

“Well, can I at least call my parents? And shouldn’t you check up on your sister?”

“Sofia’s at dad’s,” Vernon immediately answers, “and he checks the news religiously, so there’s no way he’s surprised by this. She’ll be safe. Call whoever you need and then we should pack some food and water in a backpack or a grocery bag or something and ship out.”

He doesn't look like he's in any state to be argued with right now, so Seungkwan lets him be. “Are you going to put on pants?”

Vernon goes back upstairs to find something of Seungkwan’s that fits.

Seungkwan calls his mom and, of course, she's far too busy at work and he is put directly to her voice mail. He leaves his message as quickly and concisely as he can, pretending he's not panicking so she won't panic either, and tells her to avoid places with lots of people and that he’ll text her whenever he’s able. All the while, he's praying to God or Buddha or whatever possibly-false deity he can think of that he doesn’t have to go the Vernon route and be forced to kill her, too.

 

Soonyoung and Seokmin are, for once, actually studying together when the infected break into their university campus and start spreading havoc. Really, the two of them should have realized this would happen if they did something as impossible as study.

“I think they killed Dr. Southwater,” Seokmin says from his vantage point at the school library window, which overlooks the quad where the first attack had taken place exactly forty-eight minutes ago. It’s bedlam down below—students screaming and running for their lives, and it’s impossible to determine two floors up which ones are trying to escape and which ones are the infected giving chase—but it’s quiet up here, long abandoned except for the two boys and one very old, very senile librarian who may not even know what’s going on.

“Good, I never liked the bitch,” Soonyoung mutters, staring at his textbook with glassy eyes that aren’t really seeing much of anything. “She failed me in Chemistry last term.”

“Jesus, Soonyoung, she’s _dead_. You can at least show some empathy.”

“If I start showing empathy, then this whole thing will actually feel real and I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that people I know are turning into blood-hungry freaks as I speak.” Soonyoung finally slams his textbook shut, giving up the pretense of continuing to study as screams echo down below. “Let me pretend that this is just a really stupid dream and I’ll wake up an hour before my finals ready to die.”

Seokmin pinches his own arm in a distracted manner. He’s been doing it every two minutes on the dot since the attacks started, as a way to remind him that this is real and not a dream and he could very well die before he reaches twenty or, more importantly, loses his virginity. His arm is pink and sore, but he ignores it. “Should we start running, too? If any of them head up here, we’re basically trapped.”

“Where would we go?”

Seokmin thinks about it for a moment. “The ‘burbs? Lots of pretty, big, American Dream-styled houses that are probably abandoned because the families all booked it the second they caught wind of the real-life Dawn of the Dead. We can find some nice, big safe house, maybe stock up on canned food and shit, and, I dunno, whatever people do during an apocalypse.”

"Chill out in a basement or something and play video games?"

"Oh. My god. You're a fucking genius."

“Of course I am. Your car is out front, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And it can fit at least four people?”

“Theoretically, yes.” Seokmin’s car is a 2014 Toyota Tacoma, an ass-awful faded red and one of the most uncomfortable things Soonyoung’s had to be driven in in his life. It is, however, the only car the two of them own, and if it’s hardy enough to face a metalbender collision and completely destroy a Corolla when Seokmin first got his license when he was sixteen, then it can withstand a headlong battle against zombies. “Why? Thinking of bringing anyone else along?”

“Yeah. Our neighbours. They've done a lot for us this year, we could at least show them our gratitude by giving them a lift out of here.”

Seokmin thinks about it. The two inhabitants of Markgrave Hall’s number 210 are their campus residence neighbours and what some may refer to as “bad boys” (although Seokmin has been rendered incapable of finding them scary after witnessing one of them nearly cry because the Dorm Head caught him smuggling a stray cat into his room). They aren’t exactly what normal people would call friends—or what normal people would call normal in general—but throughout their first year of uni they’ve all learned to share a pleasant symbiosis with each other, and they have invited Soonyoung and Seokmin over a number of times for smuggled alcohol and the occasional crash course in experimental herbology, so he supposes it’s only polite to try and save their lives in return. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

Markgrave Hall is clear on the other side of campus, rendering it unsafe to go to without the Tacoma, so Soonyoung and Seokmin wait for a lull in the madness to make a mad dash for the car in the parking lot. They manage to enter the Tacoma safely only because the infected chasing them got distracted by some poor girl screaming her head off and making herself the unwitting bait. As the infected close in on her, attracted to the sound of her wails like moths to a light source, the two boys tear out of the lot with a screech of smoking rubber against cement.

“Hey, I think I recognized her,” Seokmin says.

“Yeah?”

“Wasn’t she that Hannah girl? You know, the one you were going to the formal dance with next month?”

Soonyoung whirls around in the passenger’s seat to take a second look at the girl through the rear window, who’s not looking very much like a girl anymore. Or any living, breathing human girl, anyway.

“Aw, mother _fucker_.” Soonyoung smacks his forehead against his seat’s headrest. “Do you know how hard it is to find a girl actually willing to go do _anything_ with me?”

They reach Markgrave Hall, oddly empty and eerily silent after the chaos on the quadrangle. Soonyoung, the _slightly_ bravest of the two, instructs Seokmin to hide in the car and wait for him to come out with their neighbours, before he sneaks off through the side door and up the stairs. There isn’t a single trace of life; no blasting music from behind closed doors or rez advisors scolding some first years for smuggling in alcohol or the echo of students arguing in the laundry room. Soonyoung feels chilled, like he’s just accidentally bit into a popsicle and consequently froze his teeth and half his brain. The residents of Number 210 might not even be home, he suddenly realizes. Worse, they might already be zombies. If only he had grabbed their phone number at some point within the past seven months they’ve known each other, then he could’ve just texted them.

However, like most college students whose lives are an utter mess, he had never anticipated that a zombie apocalypse might happen and thus require him to get his next door neighbors’ number.

He slams his fist three times against the scratched surface of their door, gasping for air. Even one flight of stairs has him winded. Maybe he should have joined track like his sister insisted.

“Nobody’s home, go away.”

“Mingyu, you dumb fuck, we’re not supposed to say anything when a zombie knocks on the door.”

“I’m not a zombie,” he yells, hammering his fist some more. “I’m Soonyoung!”

“See, what’d I say? It’s a zombie. Get away from the door, Mingyu.”

“I just _told_ you, I’m not a fucking zombie! Christ, Wonwoo, I came here to save your ungrateful ass, the least you can do is open your door and follow me before our getaway driver gets his head smashed open by a brain-boy.” Seokmin can run into telephone poles and trip on absolutely nothing on  _good_ days, Soonyoung shudders to think what might happen if he's left to his own devices in an apocalypse.

“Bull _shit_ , Zom-Soonyoung,” Wonwoo’s voice says, in the same smartass tone he uses whenever he thinks he’s absolutely right about something. Soonyoung faintly hears the snap and click of a lighter. “You and Seokmin went to study at the library closest to the quad. There’s no way you got out without getting a good teething.”

“Are you lighting up right now? Idiot, this is Day-fucking-Z, you wanna get high _now_ of all times? Mingyu, punch him.”

There’s the sound of several wimpy baby slaps and muffled cursing, followed by Wonwoo yelling out, “For fuck’s sakes, Mingyu, I swear to—this is a normal cig, okay, Soonyoung? Plain ol’ Camels, god, I’m not _stupid!_ ”

“You know, I don’t think zombies can talk, Wonwoo,” Mingyu says, his voice sounding contemplative, which is always a dangerous sign. He's that special brand of stupid that reverses around to actually being smart, except he only uses his brain to make bad decisions. “Maybe he’s not a zed-head, after all.”

“No way. Soonyoung can’t run up a flight of stairs without nearly dying. There’s no way he outran a zombie infestation.”

“Look,” Soonyoung bursts out, offended that Wonwoo has so little faith in him but also gratified that Wonwoo’s lack of faith stems from knowing him too well, “Seokmin is waiting outside with his ugly car. I’m offering you guys a ride outta here and home free. If the two of you wanna stay locked up in your cannabis den and bump dicks until you starve to death or a real zombie bashes their way in, be my guest. I’m not waiting for much longer.”

There’s a brief moment of silence.

“Give us five minutes,” Wonwoo finally says. “For us to pack up our shit. You should grab whatever you need next door, too. Seokmin will probably cry if we really leave without you bringing that gross picture he keeps on his bulletin board.”

“You mean the picture of his family?”

“Yeah, that thing.”

“Well, I’ll need something to carry stuff in.” Soonyoung’s small messenger bag is already stuffed with his laptop, wallet, and assorted notebooks and textbooks.

The door abruptly opens. The view into the catastrophic mess that is the dorm room is mostly blocked by Wonwoo, tall and raven-haired and slightly intimidating as always, mostly due to his multitude of painful-looking ear piercings and the snakebites flashing beneath his bottom lip and the fact that he dresses like he’s just stepped out of an Angsty Teen Emo Concert sponsored by Hot Topic than anything to do with his actual personality. He grins down at Soonyoung with a cigarette between his lips and throws him a backpack.

“Nice to see you aren’t a zombie, Soonyoung.” Only Wonwoo can master the art of talking with a cig in his mouth and not sound like an utter moron.

“I _told_ you I wasn’t like a million times, you dick,” Soonyoung scoffs, before scrambling one door over and fumbling for his keys.

 

Six hours into the Armageddon (or the Zomageddon, as he coined it two hours previously, which Jeonghan thought was so awful he made him secret-best-friend-pinky-swear-handshake not to ever say it again), Joshua was reborn and emerged as the second coming of Dog Whisperer Jesus.

Or rather, he learned that his diehard loyal army of dogs from the dog shelter he worked at could, in fact, be used to detect, distract, and fight off the infected.

“Not that I’m saying this isn’t a good idea or anything,” Jeonghan says, tucking a stray strand of his chin-length dark hair back behind his ear, “but this isn’t really that good of an idea. We’re going to reek of dog fur, like, 24/7.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Joshua asks, patting Queen Victoria, a five-year-old doberman pinscher and secretly his personal favourite, not that he would ever say that out loud because he insists that he loves all his children equally, on the top of her sleek head. Queen Victoria looks pleased with herself.

Jeonghan gives his best friend and six dogs a disparaging look. “I don’t know about you, but I have a reputation to uphold. Smelling like puppy slobber does nothing for me.”

“This is the Zoma—sorry, the zombie apocalypse, Jeonghan. The only reputation you have right now is whether you’re alive, dead, or one of _them_.” His bloodhound, Catherine II, twitches and growls low in the back of her throat, eyes trained farther up the street. “Cath senses some of the infected up ahead, let’s turn right here.”

They must certainly look like a sight—two young men, one with a helix piercing of a cross and still wearing a green apron that says “PAW-FRIENDS SANCTUARY” on the front; another looking embarrassed and with all the genetic lottery win of having a handsome, slightly androgynous face—walking calmly down the sidewalk without a care in the world and followed by a pack of dogs. The people who have survived the initial attack of the infected and had barricaded themselves indoors peek through blinds and stare at them incredulously, wondering what kind of fucking idiots would just make their way out in the open when there’s an honest-to-god apocalypse on everyone’s hands.

Joshua is that kind of fucking idiot. A part of him is still hoping that this is all just one big joke, or a mistake, and that if he carries on like normal sooner or later the army is going to drive in and make everything go back to the way it was.

But until then, his dogs can sense where the infected are, warn him if any are around, and can even pick enough of a fight for Joshua and Jeonghan to run to safety. From what he's seen, the infected only go after humans, not animals, so he doesn't have to worry about one of his babies turning into a Resident Evil zom-dog.

So far, it’s going perfectly. But then again, he and Jeonghan had locked themselves in the back room of the sanctuary during the initial pandemonium, so by now the infected have long since made their way towards a different part of the city in search of more prey. The streets are mostly abandoned except for a few survivors here and there running towards their cars or making a break for the nearest police station.

“Okay, I get that,” Jeonghan says in frustration, “but do we really need to bring along _this_ many dogs? Couldn’t we leave a few back at the shelter? Like, we’re basically a travelling freak show right now.”

Joshua gives him a look. “‘Leave them at the shelter’, he says. ‘Travelling freak show’, he says. Listen up, Jeonghan: Queen Victoria, Wu Zetian, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hatshepsut, Empress Theodora, and Catherine II aren’t dogs, they’re _family_. And they’re all coming with us. End of story.”

Jeonghan grimaces, buries his face into his hands, and groans. “Okay, like, _see?_ Why did you give them names like _that?_ Do you see what my problem is right here, Joshua Hong?”

Disgruntled and feeling betrayed, Joshua gives Queen Victoria a reassuring scratch behind the ears so she knows that Jeonghan didn’t mean to be rude. “I thought you _liked_ the dogs. That’s why you came to the shelter every day to visit me in high school, right?”

Jeonghan stares at him. “No. Joshua. I visited you every day in high school because I wanted to get into your pants.”

“Oh. Oh, shit, you're right.” Ah, the memories. Joshua reaches his arm awkwardly behind him to unzip the small pouch on the side of his backpack and pull out a granola bar. Chocolate chips and trail mix. “Then once you _did_ get into my pants you realized you had absolutely zero interest in below-the-belt business at all and broke up with me right after. Right. After. During post-coitus cuddles, if you want to be specific.”

Jeonghan sighs and steals a bite of the granola bar, internally reminding himself that, yes, this guy just used the term “post-coitus cuddles” with absolutely zero embarrassment, but he’s honestly said things even worse than that before and Jeonghan isn’t in any position to go running off down the street in mortification. As much as he hates the prolonged smell of fur and dried saliva, the dogs really are the absolute best defense against zombies right now. It’s like playing a video game and being protected by a big blue shield that surrounds you like a dome wherever you move, if the dome barked a lot and had truly astoundingly awful doggy breath.

“We’ve gone over this like a million times. I _said_ I was sorry that it had to take me confessing and then having sex with you to realize that, a) I didn’t really like having sex, and b) I didn’t really like being in relationships. And that I more or less broke your heart after seducing you for six months. Are you still not over that?”

“I’m currently your best friend, so you can assume I’ve gotten over it at some point in the past four years we’ve known each other. Otherwise I’d be some sort of masochist or something way fucked up.” Joshua finishes off the granola bar and carefully places the empty wrapper back into his backpack pouch. No need to litter. Eleanor of Aquitaine barks happily somewhere behind him.

“If it’s any consolation after four years,” Jeonghan supplies unhelpfully, “if I _had_ to date or fuck anyone, it would be you.”

“Aw, thanks, that’s actually really nice of you to say.”

The sun is starting to set, the sky turning as red as the blood occasionally staining the streets, something that both boys pretend they don’t notice. So far, pretending has worked out well for the two of them. They walk down familiar store-lined roads that feel different and strange without the usual hustle and bustle of cars and consumers, hoping that by the time they stop walking, a solution to today's pandemonium will present itself.

“Do you think it would’ve worked out between us?” Jeonghan muses. “If, you know, I wasn’t aromantic and asexual and you weren’t romantically needy?”

“Probably not.”

“Um. What the fuck. Why?”

Joshua looks at his best friend and says, as if it’s obvious, “You don’t like dogs.”

 

“We,” Junhui says, speaking up after hours of numb-headed silence, “picked a really _bad_ fucking time to go backpacking across the States.”

Minghao doesn’t answer. His head is filled with happy thoughts, like being back in China and being back in school and everything makes sense and he didn’t just witness an old woman get mauled at the bus stop that morning. Nope. Nothing of that sort. Happy thoughts.

“We are carrying, literally, just backpacks. We don’t have a house, we don’t have a car, and I’m pretty sure they shut down the airports so we might as well not even have passports, either.”

They have nowhere to go, that’s for sure. Going back to hide in their hostel is a terrible idea. After a gruesome incident back in 2006, their hostel decided to remove all locks from their doors. Minghao supposes that after _this_ gruesome incident, the hostel will probably put the locks back on.

“I mean, we’re literally fucked. Or, well, metaphorically fucked. Unless you’re into zombies, in which case that metaphor might actually turn literal, but then that’d make you a necrophiliac, which, I mean, you know me, everything within a ten feet radius of me is a kinkshame-free zone, but I have to draw the line somewhere—”

“Junhui, for the love of god, shut the fuck up before I stop this bicycle and shove the entire thing down your throat.”

“Right.”

They ride their bicycles in silence down the side of the highway. It’s eerily empty, except for the occasional few cars whizzing by at top speed. Minghao wonders when it’ll start getting jam-packed with people trying to leave the cities, start a pileup that creates more havoc and becoming a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet, a domino line of infection, like they show in every zombie movie he’s ever seen. It’s starting to get dark, and Minghao is trying not to think about what he and Junhui are going to do then. Riding their bikes and balancing them in the tiny space between the guardrail and the white line on the road that indicates that if you swerve across it you’re a shit driver is not gonna be fun when night falls.

Also, Minghao’s worried he might actually snap and kill Junhui out of sheer annoyance before the two of them can make it back home alive. He wonders if this is showing up on the news, and wonders how many frantic Line messages he’s going to get from his parents once he finds a place with Wi-Fi.

“So,” Junhui speaks up, and Minghao groans. “Are we riding these stolen bikes anywhere in particular?”

“We didn’t ‘steal’ them,” Minghao reminds him grumpily, “we are ‘borrowing’ them and returning them whenever we can.”

“Right. Right. Because obviously once this all blows over we’re going to ride them _back_ to the city and return them to the exactly specific bike rack we stole them from.”

Minghao wants to roll his eyes but resists, knowing that all that’ll do is make his balance go all wobbly and nearly throw him onto the road or over the guardrail to splatter to the ground several dozen feet below. He settles for exhaling loudly, and reminds himself that Junhui is a close family friend, that’s the reason why they’re even backpacking together in the first place, and that if Minghao stages a murder he’d have to deal with poor Aunt Wen crying at Junhui’s future funeral, and he’s much more partial to Aunt Wen than Junhui at the moment. So for the sake of Junhui’s much nicer and cooler mother, he holds himself back.

“Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Minghao finally answers, focusing on the breeze ruffling his hair beneath the rapidly darkening sky. “Wherever this highway takes us, I guess, somewhere safe with shelter and food and away from the zombies.”

“What if we ride into this next city and it’s just the same thing that we ran away from? Another hellscape?”

Minghao thinks about it. “Well, this is real life, not the movies. We’re not waking up twenty-eight days later when the government’s already collapsed and the military’s gone to shit and the majority of the population has already been infected, right? This is probably the first day it’s gotten this bad and reached the masses, otherwise we’d have heard about it on the news or Twitter or something at some point, right?”

“Right.”

“So, realistically, the infection couldn’t have spread all across America in less than twenty-four hours. There’s gotta be some places that haven’t been hit yet. Or even better, the military has already gotten into action and are putting up quarantines or barricades or something around densely populated areas.”

“Oh. Shit, that makes sense.”

“Of course it does. People are freaking out because mass media has consumed their brains. They watch all these horror movies and zom-coms and think that they’ll know exactly what to do to save themselves in an apocalypse. But in real life, the government isn’t stupid, infections can’t travel that fast, and if people are smart and just stay inside their houses and not cause a big fuss, I’m pretty certain the infected will just run right past them.”

Junhui happily rings the bell on his bicycle, listening to its echo in the evening air. Minghao tells him to stop it unless he wants to alert everybody to their presence. “You’re pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. Are you a zombie nut? Or do you nut over zo—”

“If you want your handsome nose kept intact, don’t finish your sentence.” Minghao pauses, then dings his own bicycle’s bell, smiling faintly when Junhui lets out a cheer behind him. “When I was studying English, the easiest and most enjoyable way was to just consume as many genres of movies as possible. Don’t you remember me going through horror movies back-to-back all last fall? There was a whole week about zombies. I even wrote some bullshit essay paper on how Romero predicted the mindset of America’s youth and their zombie-like devotion towards consumerism.”

Junhui has never watched a horror movie in his life, so he has no clue—well, there was that one time where he walked in on Minghao watching the Exorcist and stayed for approximately fifteen minutes before running back to his own house shrieking. He just nods as if he understands, although Minghao can’t see the action since he’s riding up front.

“Goddamn,” Minghao sighs, looking up at the sky. “We’re in trouble if we don’t reach _some_ sort of shelter by the time the sun sets.”

“Could we use the lights on our phones as flashlights and keep biking?”

“Only if you want to fall asleep on your bike or drain your phone of battery completely, and we’re not finding any outlets along the side of the road to recharge it.”

“Ah. We are in trouble, then.”

“Yeah. It may seem like we’re alone out here, but if we run into a zom on the highway, bikes aren’t going to save us.”

“Bikes are quieter, though, right? I thought zombies are attracted to noise?”

“Anybody’s attracted to noise. They aren’t dead, you know, the news said so, they’re just infected by something really fucked up. They can still use their eyes, too.”

“Shit. That makes it harder.”

Minghao sighs. He’s known Junhui far too long to be able to miss the hesitant tone creeping into his words. “Look. Jun. We’re going to be fine. Like I said, this isn’t like any of those zombie movies. We’ll find someplace safe to wait for the military to round up all the infected, and once the airports open we can go back home. Nothing to it.”

Junhui sniffs. Minghao hopes to god that it’s just from the cold-ish wind mixing with the warm-ish evening, and not Junhui breaking down. Minghao can’t have him breaking down, not in the middle of the highway where he could fall off something and die and he still has Minghao’s wallet in his backpack.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he finally says.

“You’re older than me,” Minghao accuses, “you should be the one comforting _me_. Look at me, I’m only nineteen, I’m young, I’m vulnerable. I need to be looked after.”

This seems to bring Junhui’s mood up; he guffaws like hearing Minghao say he needs to be protected is the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

Minghao kind of agrees, even though he’s the one who said it himself. His mother always used to say that Minghao could do anything once he put his mind to it. She _also_ used to say that if Minghao was ever kidnapped by a guy trying to sell his kidneys on the black market, Minghao would walk away without a scratch and carrying two extra kidneys.

And here Minghao was wondering how on earth he grew up to be such a weird kid.

 

Seungcheol is a man of very weird thoughts and very weird ideas. Jihoon, his stepbrother and best friend and designated driver and primary reluctant participant of most of these weird ideas, is more or less used to it by now.

But when he’s instructed to drive into the underground parking lot of Seungcheol’s workplace and he sits and watches Seungcheol slide an unconscious seventeen-year-old kid into the backseat of Jihoon’s dirt-brown Honda Accord Sedan, Jihoon decides that this is the weirdest fucking thing Seungcheol has done. By far.

“Are we kidnapping kids now, Cheol?” he asks with a deadpan look, tapping his finger anxiously against the side of the steering wheel. “If we’re pulled over by police, I’m claiming you’re holding me hostage and threatened me into helping you.”

“The police have their hands too full to be asking any questions, I’ll explain on the drive,” Seungcheol says, making sure the kid is more or less secure so he doesn’t go flying to the floor if Jihoon happens to brake too hard, and then sliding into the passenger’s seat himself.

“You didn’t tell me where we’re going.” Jihoon’s finger taps so hard and fast against the wheel he thinks he might start a fire with the friction. It’s a nervous habit, and right now is as good a time as any to be fucking nervous. “Zed-heads are starting to spread out and roam the streets up top, so let’s hurry up and get a move on, _okay?_ ”

“Take a breather, Jihoon. Count to ten.” Seungcheol looks _too_ calm to be in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. “Get onto the highway, we’re heading to America’s saviour.”

“Where the fuck is that?”

“The Harwuld Research Facility, dumbass. You know the one.”

Jihoon does know it—everyone does, if they live in the US and own some form of social media device. The HRF is the biggest and most technologically advanced compound of scientific pursuits in the country, inspiring yet another generation of Asian parents to push their stifling expectations onto their future doctor children. If there’s any place who can find a cure of some sort for this widespread infection, Jihoon thinks, it’s Harwuld.

“And why?”

“We have a package to deliver.”

Jihoon turns around to look at the kid, nearly crashing into a stop sign. There are many infected stumbling about, searching for new victims, but they’re left in the dust once Jihoon stomps on the gas pedal. He ignores them as much as he can and hopes that he doesn’t have to run over any of them like he’s in a whack-’em-until-you’re-bored video game.

“We’re shipping this kid to Harwuld? Can I ask _why_ the fuck?”

“Sure, you know how much I love telling stories.” Seungcheol wiggles into a more comfortable seating position, throwing his feet up onto the dashboard. Jihoon’s left eye twitches imperceptibly in annoyance, but he bears it surprisingly well considering the situation.

“So, two years ago I got a job at the hospital. It was normal business, just making my rounds, checking up on patients, you know the drill. Then, about ten months back, they suddenly sectioned off a whole wing of the hospital and put it under quarantine. They didn’t tell us much, only that there was a highly infections virus floating around and that the people infected were very aggressive and needed to be kept away from others. Naturally, I’ve seen much worse things in my time, so I thought nothing of it—”

“I _know_ all of this, you idiot, you told me about this stuff months ago when it just started happening.” Jihoon’s phone bill racks up its costs almost solely due to Seungcheol’s love of calling his beloved stepbrother every couple of days to tell him exactly what is going on in his life, even though the two of them see each other constantly. “Fast forward, please.”

“Alright, jeebus, okay. So, anyway, one of our janitors must have missed the no-entry-permitted-from-beyond-this-point memo, because he decided that he absolutely _had_ to wax every floor in the hospital and subsequently fucked us right in the ass. Luckily, I’m smart and handsome and strong and I easily escaped—”

“I’m pretty sure you just hid in the break room and drank all the coffee—”

“—and I was about to hightail my way outta there when, lo and behold, I decided that it would be best if I went into the quarantine zone to figure out what exactly was going on—”

“More likely, you got lost and accidentally wound up in the quarantine—”

“—and I happened upon this kid and his files.” Seungcheol smiles at Jihoon, a gummy smile that to most people indicates nothing more than the fact that this guy has lovely dental structure and charming dimples, but to Jihoon indicates that Seungcheol is full of weird thoughts and ideas and schemes once again. And, as always, Jihoon is going to be dragged along with him. “You’re not gonna believe what his files said.”

“Seungcheol.” Jihoon swerves sharply to avoid a single infected person growling its way towards them, narrowly missing taking off the zombie’s legs as the car whirls up the ramp to the highway. “What are you planning.”

“Were you ever a fan of comic books?” he asks cheerfully.

“Seungcheol, I’m serious. Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. Did you like comic books?”

Jihoon’s fingers tap an impatient staccato in eight-six time. It’s bad enough that, for a man who’s biggest comfort in life lies in monotonous, unchanging traditions—the habit of knocking his knuckles against the wall every time he leaves his apartment because a small, irrational part of him thinks it might protect against intruders, brushing his teeth exactly three seconds over each tooth, always starting from top left and working his way down or he has to start all over again—his whole world is suddenly falling to shit around him. But Seungcheol constantly jumping over questions and skirting around his interrogations is doing nothing to help matters. Jihoon desperately wishes he had brought cigarettes. Only a straight hour of chain-smoking is going to calm him down at this rate.

“If you’re talking about superhero comics like Marvel or DC, not really,” he finally answers. “I read a couple issues back in middle school, but that’s about it. I always thought they were kind of stupid.”

“So you were never curious as a kid? About what it’s like to be a superhero and fly around saving people?”

If Seungcheol doesn’t get around to what his true intentions are, Jihoon might punch him in the mouth. “I guess, yeah. Can you just tell me where this is going already?”

“Dearest, most beloved Jihoon.” Seungcheol’s smile spreads wider and wider until Jihoon is almost creeped out. “We’re about to become real live superheroes.”

Jihoon glances quickly at his stepbrother and seriously questions his life choices.

A low groan emerging from the back seat jolts the two of them out of their thoughts. Jihoon wants to turn around and check what’s going on, but his dad had drilled into his head to never look away from the road, especially on the highway. Some of the cars also planning their escape route out of the zombie-infested city are certainly not obeying traffic laws or driving etiquette, so Jihoon gives them all suspicious, wary looks just in case the SUV with baby-on-board stickers and confused children piled in the back goes all road rage on him and checks his Sedan over the guardrail.

“I think he’s waking up,” Seungcheol says, turning on the car's interior light and unbuckling his seatbelt to lean over and get a better look until Jihoon threatens him into putting it back on again. “I think he was sedated for most of the day.”

“Why the _hell_ was this kid sedated?” Then, Jihoon remembers a tiny detail from Seungcheol’s story. “Wait, you got him out of the quarantine zone.”

“Yes, I said that.”

“ _Seungcheol,_ Jesus _fuck_ , then that means this kid is infec—”

“Not exactly, it’s a little more complicated than that. Now shut up, or you’ll scare the baby.” Through the corner of his eyes, Jihoon sees the kid suddenly jerk awake with a loud gasp, muscles tensing and body wracked with spasms for a few seconds, before he collapses back onto the seat, shivering and sweating.

Seungcheol watches this happen with cool-headed eyes, his ‘work persona’ switched on as he carefully looks for any signs of something serious enough to get him reaching for a first aid kit. He may be a complete idiot who’s probably-most-definitely using this strange teenager for his own personal gain, but he still works at a hospital, and caring for patients is what he does best. “Hey, kid,” he says smoothly, “you feeling okay?”

The dark-haired kid makes a confused motion with his shoulders. Every so often, his whole body shakes and jerks, teeth chattering, like he’s going through miniature seizures. Jihoon makes a brief, vague prayer that he doesn’t end up with a dead teenager in the back of his car. That’s something that he’ll never be able to scrub off of the leather interior.

Luckily, the brief spasms get fainter and less frequent as time passes, until he’s able to pant out, “Who are—where am—”

Seungcheol gives him a friendly, welcoming grin. “My name is Seungcheol. I’m from the hospital. We’re taking you someplace safe. Can you tell Jihoon over here who you are?”

The kid shifts upwards with as much strength as his weakened body can manage so he can look Jihoon in the eyes through the rearview mirror.

“M-my name is Lee Chan,” he manages to mutter through tired lips, voice croaky and shaky. “And back at the hos-hos-hospital, the doctors kept calling me ‘Patient Zero’.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love zombie apocalypse stories, and I love stories that are completely and utterly ridiculous with just a hint of darkness. As such, I have created this.


End file.
